


then sirens, then bells (the broadcast remix)

by isozyme



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Gratuitous Comics References, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Reading, Panic Attacks, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Voyeurism, holy shit what's happened to Tony?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-10-17 18:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17565575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isozyme/pseuds/isozyme
Summary: “I tire of this,” Amora says, and with a casual gesture the entire team is pinned in place, frozen in mid-air.  Steve has the unsettling, half-familiar feeling of someone rifling through his head like it’s a card catalogue.  A mind-reader as well as a witch, then.A female voice whispers into his mind’s ear.It’s very tragic in here, dearheart, but I think your armored friend is, somehow, more psychically toxic than even you.What’s wrong with Tony?Steve thinks, but the presence is gone, leaving his memories of war stirred up like flying insects rising off a lake in at dawn.The Enchantress opens Tony's mind to anyone and everyone near him.  Steve knows he should let Tony keep his secrets, but he's not noble enough to stay away.





	then sirens, then bells (the broadcast remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/gifts).
  * Inspired by [quiet beats loud](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16074578) by [nasa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasa/pseuds/nasa). 



> I read _quiet beats loud_ and wondered: how could I make this even _worse_ for Tony? This is the result. It was really fun to write and I'm glad I got to remix nasa in this exchange!
> 
> Thank you to [Hopelesse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopelesse/pseuds/hopelesse) for the beta and brainstorming help.
> 
> Title adapted from [Drumming Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boo2Zm69fhY&list=RDa0cSouKnqd4&index=27) by Florence and the Machine.
> 
> I'd like to quickly re-iterate the warning about panic and anxiety -- Tony's emitting some really disordered thoughts. He is not a happy camper. At all.

On Tuesday, Tony takes Steve down to Koch and Nguyen’s Deli.  While they wait in the cramped space between glass cases of cold cuts, Tony explains that it used to just be Koch’s Kosher Deli, but then the owners married into a Vietnamese family and instead of re-doing the restaurant they just expanded the menu.

“You can get pastrami banh mi here,” Toni says, reaching around Steve to grab two cans of Dr. Brown’s cream soda.  “It’s delicious, seriously, I’m getting it, and you’re getting it too.”

“I might as well let this happen, is what you mean,” Steve sighs.  “Do you order for Pepper, too?”

“Wouldn’t dare.”

Steve rolls his eyes and gets a pat on his arm in reply.

Before Tony even gets a chance to order for both of them, their identicards beep simultaneously.  Steve flips his open and sees helicopter footage of a green orb floating serenely over Fifth Street.  The NYPD on the scene firing at it are getting nowhere; bullets ping off the sphere, ricocheting away to break windows and scatter passers-by.

“Well, the good news is that no villain in the world has any location-based imagination. Always New York! Never fails.  We won’t even have to take the subway, isn’t that nice.” Tony says. He kicks open his armor briefcase and wraps the Iron Man suit around himself like a second metal skin.  “Gimme a hug, Spangles; it’s only a few blocks to fly.”

#

Luckily, they have intelligence on the enemy as soon as the Avengers arrive on the scene.

“Amora,” Thor growls.

A woman hovers in the center of a glowing green forcefield, just high enough to brush the tops of traffic lights as she floats gently back and forth.  Steve notices that there isn’t much collateral damage.  Now that the police have backed off to give the Avengers room to work, the street is almost eerily quiet, and the only damage is from bullets that bounced off Amora’s protective shell.

Amora is dressed a in tight-fitting emerald gown.  It falls in scales over her crossed legs, shining like the carapaces of a thousand beetles.  She looks very beautiful and not at all kind.

“Thor,” Amora replies with a sharp-toothed smile.  “The one who got away.  You’re looking luscious.”

“What do you want?” Thor demands.

“At least one night with you, big boy.  And the destruction of the Avengers.”

“I refuse.”

“Why am I not surprised?” she muses, and fires a stinging volley of green darts.

The Avengers leap out of the way; Tony, Sam and Thor taking to the air while Nat and Steve call shots from the ground.

“We should have brought our Jolly Green Giant,” Tony quips over the comms.  “He’d match Elphaba here perfectly.  They’d have beautiful, angry, oz-babies.”  

“I quite enjoyed Wicked,” Thor says.  “But the Enchantress is unaffected by water, and romantic involvement with her is inadvisable.”

“Hey, everyone, Thor watches musicals! Does Defying Gravity have the same impact when everyone you know can fly?”

“Chatter!” Steve yells, and Tony grumbles but clams up for long enough to shoot a double repulsor blast at the iridescent bubble around the Enchantress.

Nothing they throw at her even rattles her.  She peppers them with glancing, annoying blows like a cat toying with her prey until Steve is frustrated enough to throw a Prius at her.  It has no effect.

“I tire of this,” Amora says, and with a casual gesture the entire team is pinned in place, frozen in mid-air.

Steve has the unsettling, half-familiar feeling of someone rifling through his head like it’s a card catalogue.  They're tangling with a mind-reader as well as a witch, then.

A female voice whispers into his mind’s ear.   _It’s very tragic in here, dearheart, but I think your armored friend is, somehow, more psychically toxic than even you._

 _What’s wrong with Tony?_ Steve thinks, but the presence is gone, leaving his memories of war stirred up like flying insects rising off a lake in at dawn.

In a blinding flash of light, the Enchantress takes off.  A moment later, the Avengers come unstuck.  Tony lands heavily, followed by Sam and Thor.

 _No no no no no no,_ Steve hears, in his head just like the Enchantress but unmistakably Tony’s voice.   _We are not doing this, I am not having a panic attack on live telepathic radio broadcast._

Steve’s chest goes tight with magically enhanced empathy.  Images flash before his eyes, an invading army, the feeling of vast, yawning distance, _he’s going to die here and there will be nothing to bury and he can’t breathe, how long before the oxygen in the suit runs out it’s not built for this he didn’t plan this he’s going to die alone he’s going to die —_

“Pull yourself together!” Nat shouts in Tony’s face.

The torrent of fear stops.  Tony’s faceplate lifts, revealing his bloodless face.  His ashen pallor makes his eyes look even larger than usual, more vulnerable.  They’re dark and limpid with terror.

“So, everyone got that same as me?” Sam asks, unbuckling his flight goggles and making a face.

Nods all around.

“Guy needs therapy,” Sam says under his breath.  Steve doesn’t think Tony catches it.

 _I hate this,_ Tony thinks, and every head turns to him.  Tony flips the faceplate of the armor shut again with a hostile snap and starts to list prime numbers over ten thousand in his head, loud enough to drown out everything else.

#

Back in Avengers Tower, the team gathers around Tony, who’s sitting on the couch with his head in his hands.

“Hey, Thor?” Tony says.  “Your ex sucks.”

“Don’t be foolish!” Thor insists.  “She is not my ex.  The Enchantress is…an old family friend.”

Natasha crosses her arms and examines her nails. “You know, my family friends don’t blast Thanksgiving dinner with Tony Stark’s traumatic past.”

“You don’t have family friends, Spy Kids III,” Tony snaps, then grits his teeth.  For a second Steve hears, _Family friends like Obie, huh, Stark?  God, I should have known,_ overlaid by the full-body sense-memory of being paralyzed, a terrible sound vibrating through his _bones_ while his heart clenches in the wrong rhythm.

Tony screws his eyes shut and starts counting again: _89, 144, 233, 377, 620, 987, 1597._

“Okay, team, square up.  Let’s get a bead on her trajectory, see what air traffic control has in the area, and follow her,” Steve says.  If they can find her, they can try to strike a bargain.  Thor could go on a date, maybe.  A heavily supervised date.  

“No use,” Thor replies. “She can teleport.”

“Of course,” Steve says.  He can feel his shoulders slump.  

Tony’s fingers dig into his hair, white-knuckled.  “I need everyone to get away from me,” he says.

“No,” Steve says immediately.  “We stick this out together.”

“You don’t _understand,_ ” Tony snarls.  “ _I_ deal with the inside of my own head.  I’m used to it.  But none of you can take my issues on top of your own.”

Natasha settles back on her heels, stare gone cool and impassive.

“You think we were a bomb waiting to go off before?” Tony challenges.

“Tony,” Steve starts, but he’s interrupted again as Tony lifts his head and waves a hand in a sharp gesture.  His hair sticks up at wild angles and he looks, horrifyingly, like he might cry.  He doesn’t -- instead he fixes Steve with a piercing gaze and stops counting in his head.  Steve can feel the pressure of his attention like a physical press against his chest.

 _I read your file_ , Tony thinks at him.

“Sometimes you want to be gone, right?” Tony says aloud, voice absolutely vicious.  “You went down with Peggy saying your name like she _loved you_ , and you were done.  Didn’t you deserve a good death?  Wasn’t it sweet to die for your country?”

“I don’t know what that has to do with the current situation,” Steve says, even as his stomach turns to ice.

 _I know where every bottle of painkillers is in this building,_ Tony thinks.   _I’ll always keep track.  There’s enough morphine to knock even you out in the emergency first aid kit by the door outside the hangar._

_There’s always an out.  Isn’t that nice?  I have a plan for everything.  Do you want to know the plan?  Think hard.  How much do you want me to share, Steve?  Because, eventually, I’ll think it._

“No,” Steve says, aghast.  Nobody else is making eye contact, but Steve forces himself to keep looking.  He’s brave.

“Now imagine me next to Bruce.”

There’s no good answer to that.

Tony throws himself to his feet and stalks off, his intent to go down to the workshop and not come out again crystal clear.  Halfway across the room he starts counting again, crisp and even like a meditation, until his thoughts fade with distance.

#

Tony doesn’t come out of the workshop for six days.  The only indication that he’s alive is an irregular stream of confused delivery drivers bringing food.  JARVIS chivvies them one by one up the elevator, through several hallways, and down to Tony’s lair.  They always leave looking slightly shell-shocked.  Steve assumes they receive large tips.

A few tentative experiments reveal that Tony is psychically projecting to everyone, although it’s stronger and longer-ranging the more he cares about the other person.  For the Avengers, mostly it’s okay if they stay about a floor away.  Pepper and Rhodey can’t even come into the building without picking up Tony’s stray thoughts, and he makes it clear to them that he’d rather ride this out alone.

Steve tries not to eavesdrop, but the ability to get into Tony’s head is horribly tempting.  There’s one couch directly above Tony’s workbench one floor below, and Steve finds himself sitting there a lot.  Mostly, Tony thinks about engineering problems.  Sometimes he sleeps — not enough, but sometimes.  When he does, the dreams are unpleasant.

Steve feels Tony wake from a fitful half-hour nap mid-afternoon on day six, gasping and confused.

_Well that was a bracing set of flashbacks.  Yikes.  You know, I think I could really use a hug.  Or a blowjob.  That would be great._

_Not really an option right now.  Might as well —_

Steve learns, too quickly, where Tony keeps the lube in his workshop.  He decides it’s time for a run.

#

Some days Steve’s not a very good person.

He wants things to go back to normal, he does. He misses Tony dragging him out to lunch every other day at some hole-in-the wall place in Queens.  Tony always wanted to show Steve some new food, like a month ago when he delightedly introduced Steve to soup dumplings.  Tony had ordered four baskets of hot, steaming dumplings and demonstrated with almost indecent pleasure how to properly eat them.  Steve learned how to pull a dumpling off the parchment paper without tearing the delicate dough, to settle it onto the wide spoon, top it with vinegar, to bite a hole in the top and suck out the broth.  When they’d finished Tony’s lips had been shiny with rich pork fat, and Steve felt so sated and warm he never wanted to leave.

Tony’s first line of defense is misdirection. He waves his emotions in front of people like a matador’s cape.  Look over here, he says, and Steve always does, because Tony is flashy, fascinating, occasionally infuriating, and knows exactly what he’s capable of.

And, much as Steve wishes the spell would break, it’s an intoxicating novelty to have a window into what’s actually in Tony’s head, past all the crap.  Steve shouldn’t — Tony didn’t give him permission, is explicitly unwilling to share his vulnerabilities with anyone — but Steve can’t resist.  He _wants_.

Without meaning to Steve ends up keeping the same hours as Tony.  He feels compelled to stand a silent vigil alongside Tony’s worst moments.  Tony’s nightmares are vivid and horrifying, but Steve likes them better than his own.

Tony’s afraid of thirst, helplessness, chest pain, spaces that are too small and ones that are too large.  Steve’s afraid of joggers who move too quickly in the park, and air that smells like mold (his asthma is gone, he tells himself, and it doesn’t matter), of needles and falling.

They’re both afraid of drowning.

At three in the morning of the sixth day, something about the tone of Tony’s thoughts jerks Steve out of his Netflix-watching fugue.  They’ve gone sharp-edged and purposeful in a way Steve doesn’t like.

_Okay, let’s do this._

_“JARVIS?  Throw up the New York footage.  Yeah, that footage.  Give me a 3D reconstruction of the starfield, project it centered on me, kill all the other lights.”_

_This doesn’t feel the best.  Already, huh.  Buck up, Iron Man, it’s just a picture.  An image never hurt anyone.  I don’t know if I can breathe.  That’s a weird thing to not be sure about._

_“Hubble data up, start matching with that big blue bastard over there -- the galaxy, not the star -- and section off, I can’t think, give me a second.  All observed disc-shaped galaxies with that emission spectra that are within five hundred light years of that, the infra-red gas, the, thing.”_

_Stop it.  Stop it right now.  If you can’t figure out where the army is coming from you can’t save all of them and that’ll be on you.  This isn’t hard!  It’s just data, numbers, it’s safe!  You’re weak, you’re going to let the worst happen because you’re selfish.  But that’s just like you, isn’t it?  Don’t care who gets done in as long as Tony Stark gets his._

_If I don’t do this Steve will die.  He’ll die, and so will everyone else, and it’ll be my fault._

_I can’t.  I can’t.  I have to and I can’t._

Steve’s own breath whistles in his chest like it hasn’t in eighty years.  He puts two fingers to his pulse, counts for fifteen seconds, multiplies by four.  Forty-eight, normal for him at rest.  It feels like it’s pounding out of his chest.

Tony’s panic crests and spills over.

_I think I lost time.  The lights are up, why are the lights up?  JARVIS, buddy, did you take over for a second there?_

The room sways around Steve as Tony regains his bearings.  He can get air again.  Steve feels Tony pick himself up off the ground, stumble over to the kitchenette in the corner of the workshop and pour himself a glass of water.  He leaves the tap on long enough to wash his hands thoroughly with soap, halfway up his forearms.

_Can’t handle this place right now.  I’m going to have to go upstairs.  Fuck me._

Steve tries not to think of it as ambush.  He’d like to tell himself it’s a coincidence that he’s chosen this moment to get up and go to the kitchen.  The kettle he puts on the stove could be just for him, set to make tea, or hot chocolate, or whatever Tony wants that isn’t coffee or alcohol.

Tony appears in the doorway, momentarily unaware of Steve, and heads blindly for the coffee maker.   _Coffee, three in the morning, shouldn’t, coffee anyway, mmmm, yes, coffee is good._

He looks almost as awful as his thoughts feel.  Steve wants to bundle him up in a heavy wool blanket and stick him on double rations until the hollowness in his cheeks goes away.  If Tony would let him, Steve would bully him into a proper shave, the kind you take your time with, maybe even let somebody else do for you.

The best Steve can do is keep him away from caffeine for a few hours.

“No coffee, Tony.  It’s three in the morning,” Steve says, echoing Tony’s own thoughts.  “I’m making herbal tea.”

Tony looks up, thoughts piling up into a traffic jam in his head.   _Tea!  Gross, not tea — oh fuck Steve, Steve is here — I’m so tired, now this — he expects me to drink tea, me, tea — I can’t do this right now!_

With a wash of vertigo, Steve sees himself through Tony’s eyes.  His undershirt shirt is too tight, like he does it on purpose to show off his biceps, his flat stomach, pristine white that makes the warm tones of his complexion practically glow.  Steve’s never been so aware of his own mouth in his entire life.

Then it stops, cut off like a light going out, and instead Steve is very focused on the inner workings of an imaginary carburetor, picking the pieces apart one by one, turning them this way and that. Steve’s previous knowledge of carburetors had been that they were a very difficult to fix in the rain while a strategically vital truck sank slowly into the mud.

“Tea!  You shouldn’t have,” Tony says, putting on a little sarcastic simper.  “All this mothering over little old me.”

“If you don’t sleep soon, you’re going to keel over.”

“Believe it or not, I’ve gone longer,” Tony says, glancing with obvious intent at the coffee maker.

“C’mon, Tony,” Steve says, ducking his head and looking up at Tony through his bangs.  He tries on a genuine smile, attempting to catch Tony’s darting gaze.  Even grease-stained and weary, Tony’s so vivid it almost hurts.

Steve takes a step toward Tony, wanting to give him the hug he’d heard Tony privately wishing for earlier.

Tony jolts backwards.  He braces himself in a reflexive fighting stance, right arm out with the palm pointed at Steve’s chest.

“If you come any closer, Cap, I’ll blast you through a wall,” Tony warns.  His face is set in a casual smile, as if he’s just grandstanding, making a joke, but a gauntlet unfolds itself from a metal cuff around Tony’s wrist.  With a high whine, it powers up blue-white.

Steve holds his hands up and backs carefully away.  “This isn’t sustainable for you,” he says gently.  It would be nice to have his shield.  Tony’s radiating antsy misery and a desire for scotch so strong Steve can almost smell the liquor.

 _Fuck him.  The hell it isn’t sustainable,_ Tony thinks aggressively.

“You don’t have to hide things from us.”

For a moment Tony’s mind opens up in pure, agonized longing.  Then, with a precise burst of light, Tony blasts Steve’s tea kettle off the stove and into the sink, where it clashes against the Avengers’ dirty dishes and spills with a boiling hiss.

“Next one hits you in the kisser, Bing Crosby.”

Tony wouldn’t — he’d never — but he’s tired, and there’s bad things in his head, a darkness the Enchantress believes is horrible enough to tear the Avengers apart, and Steve shouldn’t be prying anyway.

Steve makes a tactical retreat, up and away to his own floor of the tower, where he can’t hear if Tony pours himself coffee, or tea, or whiskey.

#

Steve gets ambushed himself the next morning, sitting on his Tony-listening couch trying unsuccessfully to read about the Gulf War.  Sam comes in, sweaty from the heat outside, and plops down next to him.  Steve gets a lapful of envelopes and colorful flyers.

“I’m volunteering you to help stuff mailers for the VA,” Sam informs him cheerfully.

One by one, Sam stacks the flyers, yellow-blue-green-white, folds them, and hands them over to Steve so he can fit them into an envelope and lick the flap closed.  Every time Steve makes a face at the taste of the glue Sam laughs.

“So…” Sam says, when they’re about halfway through the stack of mailers.

“Mmm?” Steve replies, mouth full of envelope.

“We gotta talk about the Enchantress.  The team’s a hot mess.  Thor’s still hunting around in Asgard, Tony’s in his workshop and not coming out any time soon, and you’re sulking.”

“M’not sulking.”

“Dude, you’re sulking.”  Sam is always right.

Steve huffs out a sigh and puts his envelope down, folding it shut with big, clumsy hands.

“There’s something wrong — really wrong — with Tony,” Steve says, voice small.  “He has _awful_ dreams, and he can’t -- the Enchantress told me I was tragic but she called him _toxic_.”

Sam nods and doesn’t say anything.  Down in the workshop Tony is muttering to himself.   _What’s the order of operations here, hmm, I bet I can do this without breaking out the angle grinder if I just make the right sequence of bends…_

“It’s hurting him.”

“No shit, Cap,” Sam says, then sighs and slowly creases a stack of papers into thirds.  “Lots of people carry pain around with them.  Doesn’t mean he wants your help, or that he’d know how to take it if he did.”

“I can’t sit here and _listen_ and do nothing.”

“You can hear him from this floor?” Sam asks, frowning.

“Yeah.”

“ _I_ can’t,” Sam says.

That’s not what Steve expected.  Downstairs, Tony bashes his thumb between what he’s working on and some piece of equipment.   _Oh you dumb bastard! Stupid idiot work-hardening aluminum garbage!_

Steve laughs.  Sam raises an eloquent eyebrow in his direction.  “Um.  Tony’s frustrated.”

“Does he _know_ you can eavesdrop on him from this spot?”  Kindly, Sam doesn’t mention that Steve spends a lot of time on this particular couch.

Steve hangs his head.

“I’m not hearing a no,” Sam surmises.

“He threatened to toss me across the room if I got too close last night.”

“You don’t need me to tell you this is shitty behavior,” Sam says.

“I’ll — “

“You’re going to tell him,” Sam says firmly.

“I can’t get close without making this worse,” Steve says.  He rubs one finger up and down the flap of an envelope.  It cuts his skin, predictably.  Steve hisses and sticks his finger in his mouth.  By the time he takes it out, it’s healed.

“I’m about to introduce you to another miracle of the modern era, Steve: video chat.”

Steve wants to protest that he _knows_ about video chat. Tony’s given him a thorough primer on the power of his StarkPhones.  But he hadn’t thought of it for this situation, and he feels silly.

“Take some flyers too if you want,” Sam adds.  “We have extras, and there’s info for dealing with loved ones suffering from trauma.”

“Tony’s just another teammate.”

“Uh-huh.”

#

It’s a nice summer day; a good one for sitting in the park and messing up his relationship with Tony.  It would be easier if Tony hadn’t wormed his way under Steve’s skin, inserted himself as the Avenger’s de facto second, given them all a home.

Steve plays with the straw in his cold-brew and lemonade drink.  It doesn’t taste nice, exactly.  Tony would have called it interesting.

Belatedly, Steve wishes he had thought to have this conversation somewhere more private.  Except nowhere in the tower is far enough from Tony to be safe, and he doesn’t have a home anywhere else. Steve isn’t going to call Tony from a sterile SHIELD meeting room.

Across from him, a businessman shakes out his newspaper and a pair of tourists splash their fingertips in the fountain.

Fine.  Facetime.  Steve can do this.

Tony answers the call with a grunt.  His face is oddly illuminated, orange and blue light playing over his cheekbones, his eyes ringed with sunlight.

Ah, Tony’s flying the suit.  Somewhere high up where nobody can hear him think.

Steve still wishes he could share what Tony’s feeling anyway.  Tony loves to fly, it’s obvious from the way he whoops with excitement over the comms when he pulls a tight turn, yelling into the g-force.   Steve wants Tony to sweep him up off the ground and let Steve feel that exhilaration as if it’s his own.  It wouldn’t just be the dark parts of Tony’s mind out in the open.  There’s good in there too.

“Hey Tony, are you — I can call back later.”

“Nah,” Tony says.  “Just testing out some new gyroscopes.  Pulling out of tumbles, sort of essential for surviving in this tin can.”

“Makes sense,” Steve says, and he wants to skip this conversation, but Tony is staring at him expectantly.

Steve sighs.  “Sam said I had to, um, tell you that I can hear your thoughts from farther away than the rest of the Avengers.”

Tony’s mouth tightens and he looks away from the camera.  Steve wishes, horribly, that he could tell what Tony was thinking.  “No problem,” Tony says, all the emotion scrubbed out of his voice.  It might be the cell phone reception, or it might just be that Tony has a lot of practice giving press conferences when he’s hurting and doesn’t want to reveal anything.  “You’re a good guy, Cap, and we’re working better together these days.  Heaven forbid I might like you a bit.”

“More than the rest of the team?” Steve asks, which isn’t the point of this call.

“I play favorites,” Tony says flatly, like he’s expecting a blow in return.  That’s not what Steve meant, he meant — he’s glad.  Selfish, but glad.

“I like you too, Tony,” Steve says.  “It’s okay, I, that’s great.  You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Tony smiles, a tentative one, his face not quite sure if it wants to be pleased or combative.  “Those are my favorite words.  Say it again, please, it makes me warm way down in my belly, say congratulations Tony Stark, you haven’t done anything wrong, ever.”

“It was me. I did something.  I did — I should have told you.”

Tony’s smile twists, hardens.  “Okay, those words are less my favorite.  Should have told me what, exactly?”

“I can hear you from the common room.”

“Yeah, and? I don’t love that my brain is leaking through an entire floor but — wait. Hang on. You’re all _guilty_ , why — Steve. Have you been spending time in the common room?”

Steve swallows, looks at the fountain.  The hand holding the phone sags; when he glances back the camera’s pointed at the sky, reflecting blue.

“ _Steve,”_ Tony warns.  “Show me your face.  Have you?”

“I wanted to know you were okay.”

“And I wanted you to _stay out of my head!_ ” Tony shouts,  control breaking.  Something in the helmet’s interface flashes red — Steve can see the warning light reflected in Tony’s pupils.  “Silence alarm!” he snaps.

“It was a mistake to have this conversation while you were in the air,” Steve says.  “I don’t want you to have an accident.”

“Screw you, Rogers!”  More alarms sound in the suit, loud even over the phone.  “If you cared about me you would have let it be my call.  I thought you respected me.”

“You’re hurting,” Steve says.

“And that’s my problem, not yours!”

Steve feels himself getting angry.  “That’s not true!  It stopped being just your problem when you joined a team.  You’re on my team.  You’re my responsibility.”

“Maybe,” Tony says, slow, venomous, “I shouldn’t be.”

“Tony — “

“End call.”

Steve stares at the black screen with its red call icon for a long time.  Then he gets up and throws his drink, mostly full, in the garbage.  He feels guilty right afterwards — the liquid will spill into the bottom of the bag and probably leak, making a park maintenance worker’s job harder — but doesn’t turn around to pick it up.

#

Tony touches down from his test flight late at night.  He has dark bruising stretching from jaw to temple, disappearing into his hairline.  It’s ugly and swollen, cut in places where Steve knows the suit’s helmet has seams.  Tony obviously spent the rest of the test flight rattling himself around, and Steve expects he won’t seek medical treatment at all.

The only reason Steve knows Tony’s come home at all is that JARVIS takes pity on him and interrupts his sleepless fretting with a video feed of the landing pad.

“I hope this soothes your worries, Captain,” JARVIS says gently.

“Not really.”

“Mr. Stark has suffered similar contusions to no particular lasting harm.  I am certain he will recover again.”

Steve wonders if JARVIS is only talking about Tony’s banged-up face.  “Thank you, JARVIS,” he says, and tries to sleep.

#

Steve calls Tony four times, and every time Tony lets the answering machine get it.

_Tony’s phone.  If you’re Pepper, I’ll sign it later.  If you’re Rhodey, tell them I’ll get there when I get there, I’m busy.  If you’re an Avenger, press one to transfer to the bad guy alert hotline, or press two and the Stark IT department will fix it, not me.  Don’t leave a message, bye!_

“Hi Tony, it’s Steve, I want you to -- no, that’s not right, dammit.”

_Tony’s phone.   If it’s Pepper, I know you know how to forge my signature, do that.  Rhodey, honeybunch, I’m sorry, I’ll put more guns on War Machine if that'll make you forgive me.  If you’re an Avenger, I’m in my workshop and if you disturb me several things will explode.  Seriously.  Not joking.  Don’t leave a message, bye!_

“Hi Tony, it’s Steve.  Sam gave me a flyer, you know.  For when your loved ones are suffering after coming back from their tours or -- other bad things.  It said a lot about listening, which was funny because -- dammit.”

_Tony’s phone.  Pepper, Rhodey, I know I missed that meeting with the DOD, yelling at me won’t make those contracts any more palatable, save it.  If you’re calling out of sanctimonious, misplaced guilt, go away, I still don’t want to talk to you.  Don’t leave a message, bye!_

“Hi Tony, it’s Steve, and I -- I think you were right.  The thing you said about dying for my country.  I wanted that.  Maybe I still want that.  Either way I sure don’t like saying it.  The team -- the Avengers -- that’s holding me here.  It’s good.  I hoped it could, for you, I could -- Christ.  Goddamnit.  Sorry.”

_Tony’s phone.  Everybody but Captain America, leave a message.  Steve?  Fuck off._

Steve hangs up without saying anything after that one.   _Jesus, Rogers, pull your socks up,_ he thinks, and smacks himself in the forehead.  It doesn’t help.

#

Thor doesn’t call them when he finds Amora -- of course he doesn’t, because Thor doesn’t have a phone.  Even Steve has a phone, and he’s not from a super-advanced dubiously-Norse society.  Instead he arrives unannounced in Midtown on the back of an enormous, angry, flying serpent, steering it by the whiskers. Amora darts ahead of him, turning the windows of skyscrapers into clouds of butterflies with cutting glass-edged wings.

“Cool trick,” Sam deadpans.  He makes an emergency landing on a rooftop and shrouds himself in his wings, the sharp insects bouncing off the reinforced kevlar feathers with a hail of bright pings.

Steve feels deeply ineffectual on the ground.  Tony flies high above the fray -- too high to hear, of course -- and shoots carefully aimed repulsor blasts into the fray.  Sam provides covering fire.  Steve and Natasha hurry civilians into the subway, useless in the main fight.

With a roar, Thor flies his serpent in a tight corner around the Macy’s flagship store and kicks it in the ribs until it sprays a gout of acid at the Enchantress.  She dodges behind a bus and then, with a shout, awakens every car on the street.  Crab-like legs unfold from the wheel-wells and the cars start scrambling up buildings, then leap at Thor’s flying serpent.  They bury their sharp legs into its scales with horrible half-animal growls.

Natasha jumps onto the hood of one of the crustacean-cars, grinning like it’s Christmas, and rides it like a jetski up towards Thor.  A city bus that looks more like a lobster than a vehicle bounds towards Steve.  He dodges, then flings his shield at one of the bus’s side mirrors, which had grown grotesquely into some sort of antennae.  It shears right through, making the bus hiss in anger.

“I’m fighting the MTA,” Steve mutters.  “Of course.  Never change, New York.”

The bus charges Steve again, and he takes a flying jump and flips feet-first to smash through the windshield.  The bus thrashes, bouncing Steve off the walls and ceiling.  He takes a hit in the gut from a handrail and all the air in his lungs whooshes out.  Steve shakes his head to clear it.  Maybe the bus has a brain in here.

Steve lunches for the steering wheel, tearing it and most of the dashboard free.  He tosses it, trailing wires, into the first row of seats.  The bus shivers all down its length, then sags to a stop with a wheeze.

“Did you have to bring the witch and the ravening monster to America’s biggest metropolis?” Nat yells.  “I’m not criticizing, but it seems poorly thought out.”

“She is strong, my friends!” Thor yells.  “I invite you to try directing her against her will, but I do not envy your chances.”

Steve tumbles out of the vanquished bus and leans heavily against a newspaper stand.  In front of him, the street teems with enchanted crab-cars.  They cling to Thor’s serpent like brightly colored barnacles.

“Get her out of here!” Sam shouts.  “If she turns the subways into centipedes the L train will literally never run again!”

Natasha laughs.  “And then how will the hipsters get to their gluten-free beer startups?”

Steve shudders.  He doesn’t want bring this fight into tunnels full of civilians unless they absolutely have to.

“I will try!” Thor bellows.  “Heimdall, be ready!  On my signal, open the Bifrost!”

Natasha takes the hint and fires a grappling hook to swing free of the serpent.  Thor aims his steed directly at Amora and urges it faster and faster, on a direct collision course, shrugging off the volley of molten asphalt she flings at him.

With a roar of color, a towering portal opens, swallowing Thor, Amora, and the front half of the flying serpent.  The back half lands, still writhing, in the middle of the street. Amora’s twisted car abominations fall off of it, legs turning back into tires. A car alarm wails ineffectually in protest.

“Good job, everyone,” Steve says.

“Mostly Thor,” Sam says, squinting upward towards where the afterimages of the Bifrost still dance in Steve’s eyes.

“Hey, I did kill a bus,” Steve jokes, trying not to sound bitter.

“You sure did, buddy,” Natasha says, landing in a crouch next to him.

“Where’s Tony?” Steve asks, scanning the sky.  He should have come down by now.  Even if he doesn’t want to get close, there’s plenty of roofs to wave from.  Steve likes to know his team is safe after a fight.  “Iron Man, what’s your location?” Steve asks, hoping Tony isn’t too angry to answer him.  He hadn’t said anything beyond calling his shots for the entire skirmish.

“He’s falling,” Natasha says suddenly, pointing north.  Her face is ashen.

Steve looks.  Tony’s in a poorly-controlled tumble, repulsors firing in short flashes, not enough to keep him aloft.  

“Dammit, Stark, pull up.   _Pull up_ ,” Natasha whispers, but Steve is already running.

At the last second Tony’s fall stabilizes.  He rights himself, flailing, bounces off an office building, bashes his legs on a stoplight, and then finally lands on his back in the middle of the street.

Steve strains to hear Tony’s thoughts, desperate for confirmation that he’s still alive in there.

_\-- get air, JARVIS, get me air, I can’t breathe, oh god, help, help, help, nobody’s going to help me, nobody comes for you, Tony!  You’re going to die here, you’re going to die in this cave, die in the desert, die in your brilliant electronic tin can, die in the cold.  In space.  Alone._

He’s alive, is all Steve can think.  Tony’s alive.  Steve lengthens his stride, slinging the shield onto his back and throwing himself into the sprint.

_I wish Steve was here.  That’s stupid.  He’s never going to stay.  He’s seen you, Stark, seen inside you where it’s ugly, he knows you’re not worth it!  He knows!  You tried to keep it from him and he found you out anyway and there’s nothing you can do about it._

“Tony, status!” Steve yells into the comm line.  He only hears static-y gasps for breath.  “Tony I’m almost there, you went down, tell me if you’re injured.  Please.”

_Steve?  Oh no, no no no no, not right now, don’t look at me!_

Steve vaults a tipped-over garbage can and skids to a halt next to Tony, dropping immediately to his knees and running gloved hands over the armor, looking for damage.  It’s intact everywhere Steve can see.  In Steve’s head, Tony’s thoughts come in wave after wave of dizzying fear.

“Armor override code: Alfa Tango 23 5299, all release!” Steve shouts, hoping Tony didn’t change the codes, praying that Tony still trusts him enough.

The armor unfolds around Tony like a flower, leaving him bare and shivering in the open.  Immediately Tony tucks his knees up to his chest and curls in on himself, balled up in misery.

Steve pulls his gloves off and gets his hands on Tony’s shoulders, trying to get Tony to meet his eyes.  “Anything broken?  Are you bleeding?”

Tony shakes his head, eyes unfocused, unseeing.   _Fine, it’s fine, it was a different portal.  Didn’t have to go through that one, it’s fine, it’s safe this time.  Don’t think about the other portal.  Don’t think that they’re still out there.  Don’t think about there being a next time.  Don’t.  Don’t think._

_What if I can’t make myself do it again?_

“Look at me!” Steve orders, giving Tony’s shoulders a shake.  It’s not physical, Steve’s confident now.  Panic attack, then, bad enough to knock him out of the sky.  “Come on Tony, focus, you can do it.  Come back to me.”

Tony’s gaze gets more present and his eyes roll to meet Steve’s.  They’re wide enough to see white all the way around his irises.  One corner of his mouth trembles upwards, trying so hard to be his normal irreverent smirk.  “I’m right here, Cap, don’t yell.  Did you see how big Thor’s snake was?  I bet he’s -- he’s -- a monster in bed.”

“What can I do to help?” Steve asks, ignoring Tony’s deflection.  He can still feel Tony’s heart hammering as if it’s his own.  Tony’s lungs feel like they’re surrounded with an iron band, like the armor has crumpled around him and is pressing in, in, in.

Steve can feel himself, too, an odd mirrored echo.  He’s warm, and solid, and so distant, a perfect statue on a plinth Tony can’t ever climb.

Tony turns his head away, shutting his eyes and pressing his lips together.   _I can’t say it out loud._

“Think it.  I’ll hear.”

_Get me somewhere smaller, quieter.  Inside.  Touch me, skin on skin.  Help me breathe.  Don’t leave._

“Got it.”

Steve stands up carefully, then scoops Tony up, one arm under his knees and the other under his shoulders.  Tony tucks himself close against Steve’s chest, hiding his face from the sky.  He’s easy to carry without the armor, a trivial weight.

Natasha’s voice filters in through on the team comms.  “Cap, how’s Stark?  Did you get him?”

“He’s safe.  Rattled.  You guys direct cleanup, I have this.”

There’s a Corner Bakery across the intersection, lights out and evacuated, so Steve takes them there, settling Tony in a corner behind the counter.  Quickly, Steve pulls off his heavy kevlar jacket.  Then he kneels down and unzips the back of Tony’s undersuit, letting it hang loose around his shoulders and chest, easing the bound feeling around his ribs.

“Better?”

“Little bit,” Tony says, and the just fact that he manages to speak out loud is reassuring to Steve.

Steve sits down next to Tony, stretching out his legs to encourage Tony to relax and pull his knees away from his chest. Slowly, Tony uncurls, until his legs are straight, parallel to Steve’s. Steve leans back against a cooler full of cream and almond milk and puts one arm around Tony, spreading his hand over Tony’s back.

 _Oh,_ Tony thinks, soft and surprised.   _Please, more._

Then he jerks away, thoughts scrambling to backpedal, _no, no, fuck, I know that felt good but I didn’t have to spill everything, lay my cards all flat on the table, Steve doesn’t want to be touching you he’s just being decent, he could hear that, this too, shit, I should go.  I need to go._

Steve grabs Tony by the back of the neck and yanks him back down, planting him on the floor between his legs so Tony’s hips are bracketed by Steve’s thighs.  He wraps an arm around Tony’s ribs and pulls him closer until Tony’s spine is flush with his chest.  Steve can feel the teeth of the open zipper at the back of Tony’s undersuit bite into his collarbone.  “Don’t be stupid,” he says.  “Let me do that again.  It helped.”

Very cautiously, Tony goes limp.  Steve rubs an open hand up Tony’s side, slow, from his hip up to his ribcage, thumb brushing the bottom edge of the arc reactor, then down again.

_Okay.  Okay, okay, okay, I’m okay, that feels good.  Breathe with Steve.  Hah, rhyming.  Breathe in with Steven.  Be aware of the place you’re in, the now.  Smells like poorly-cleaned espresso machine.  Floor’s making my ass cold.  Nothing hurts too bad, no injuries, just a stupid freakout over Thor’s stupid Bifrost, in front of the whole team, in front of Steve, oh fuck --_

“Shhhh,” Steve chastises, giving Tony a squeeze.  “Quit that.”

 _If I don’t think about that I’ll think about what it’d be like to fuck you,_ Tony thinks wryly.   _Oh, now I’ve -- goddamnit._

Steve feels his cheeks heat as Tony shuts his eyes and tries, very hard, to think only about counting by powers of two as high as he can.  Every time Tony misses a beat and has to reach for a number Steve gets another surround-sound flash of _what Tony thinks it would be like to give Steve a blow job_.

“This is very embarrassing,” Tony says, shivering a little as Steve pets his chest some more.  His breathing is steadying nicely, and there’s more color in his face.  Overall, Steve likes Tony thinking about sex a lot better than he likes Tony thinking about dying alone.

“I don’t mind,” Steve says carefully.  “You’re, um, I don’t mind.”

Tony twists around to squint up at Steve’s face.  “Captain Rogers, are you making a pass?  While I’m in a compromised state?  I’m ashamed of you.”

“No!” Steve says, but he’s curled protectively around Tony, one hand resting on his hip, the other wrapped around his chest, and it’s not very convincing even to himself.

“Well, cat’s out of the bag, I’d like to blow you.  Not right now, not in a _Corner Bakery_.  Obviously.  Point of interest, though: would you let me blow you in an abandoned Corner Bakery?  Don’t answer that.  I want to keep the fantasy alive.”

“Let’s get you the rest of the way calmed down, how ‘bout,” Steve suggests, but he bites his lip anyway.  Tony notices, focus razor-sharp, thoughts a little delighted.

“Fine,” Tony says, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back into Steve.  “Relax me, big boy.”

Steve snorts into Tony’s hair and resumes stroking him, soothing the tension out.  Tony gets looser against him, letting more and more of his weight fall onto Steve.  It feels good, close and safe.  Every time Tony starts to spiral up into awful thoughts Steve exaggerates his breathing, drawing Tony along with him, shaking him out of it.

 _I wonder if this is what it’d be like if he wanted me back,_ Tony thinks hazily.   _If I was good enough._

“You’re good enough,” Steve says.  His voice is so quiet he can hear the strike of his tongue against his palate louder than the words themselves.

Tony doesn’t reply, so Steve drops his face down to rest against the crook of Tony’s shoulder, breathing with parted lips against Tony’s skin, not quite a kiss, but not quite not one either.

#

After, Steve sits in the kitchen with the newspaper, far enough away from Tony’s workshop that he’s free to lick his wounds in private.  Steve owes him that much.

The New York Times acrostic puzzle is almost enough to keep Steve’s mind occupied.  It’s harder than the crossword, and trickier to do in pen.  He fills in _cheerful, sparkling, bubbly,_ with _effervescent_ and finds that he’s put a P next to a K in the grid.  That’s going to be a problem.

Maybe _zeppelin_ isn’t the answer for _type of blimp_.  Steve sighs.

A quick shower got the glass out of Steve’s hair, but the feeling of Tony against him won’t wash away.  Steve imagines waking up in a bed that’s not his and burying his face in a pillow that smells like Tony.  He knows how Tony would lower himself to his knees for him, and --

Steve chews the tip of his pen, absentminded, and gets ink in his mouth.  He makes a face at the taste.

At least nobody is listening to _his_ thoughts, Steve thinks, trying to ignore the twist of shame.  It had been awful, sharing Tony’s drowning, panicking thoughts, but at the same time Steve liked being there for him, being so close, even though Tony was suffering and didn’t want him there.

With another sigh -- he sounds like a leaky bellows -- Steve draws his pen in circles on the page, trying to get the ink to run again.  He can’t hear Tony at all right now; seems like the kitchen table is far enough away.

“Hey Cap,” Steve hears behind him, and almost jumps out of his skin.

Tony’s leaning in the doorway, dressed-down in jeans and a t-shirt with the Stark Industries logo across the chest.  The shirt looks like it’s been dragged through a chimney and then used to mop the floor of a paint factory.  The jeans don’t look a lot better.

“Can you hear me now?” Tony asks, grinning, while he presses two fingers to his temple and stares intently at Steve.

“Oh!  No, I can’t,” Steve says, flashing a grin back at Tony.  “You’re fixed!”

“Thor came back with some fancy necklace, hit it with his hammer a couple times and, presto-chango, brain’s a lockbox again.”

That’s Steve’s opening to apologize.  He squares his shoulders, feeling the smile fall off his face.  “Look, Tony, I’m -- I shouldn’t have --”

“Steve, don’t.  Leave it.  I hate two things: goodbyes and apologies.  Boycotting them has saved me a world of pain.”

“You hate more than two things,” Steve counters.

“Shh, no, don’t argue, I’m the sole expert on me again and I say there’s only two things.  You fucked up, I got mad, then we did the whole battlefield intimacy thing and you didn’t freak out even a little bit when I imagined what your dick looks like, so, we’re square.”

“Okay,” Steve says, trying to parse all of that out and lagging a bit behind.

“Water under the bridge.  Smoke in the wind.  My OS is updated, firewalls back up, any weird stuff on the ol’ hard drive is wiped,” Tony carries on, his familiar chatter speeding up the way it does when he’s scrambling to cover some vulnerability.  Steve’s been in Tony’s head for a week.  He thinks, maybe, he knows what Tony’s afraid of this time.

“There was some stuff you thought, about me, that was wrong,” Steve says carefully.

“What’s that?” Tony asks sharply, eyes narrowing.

“Well, for one, my horn’s not that big.”

Tony barks a laugh and covers his face with one hand.  “God, Rogers, warn a guy before you make a dick joke.  It’s a statistically improbable event; I wasn’t prepared.”

“But, also.  I want.”

“Want _what?_ ”

“To touch you,” Steve says, smaller than he means to.

“Huh,” Tony says, like Steve’s just told him an interesting engineering fact.  Then he stops, fiddles with the hem of his t-shirt, sticks one fingertip through a place where he’s burnt a hole in it somehow.  He licks his lips, quick, like he’s checking for blood.

Steve wants to feel the ridges of muscles over Tony’s ribs again.  He doesn’t know how to say that, or how to say that he doesn’t think the inside of Tony’s head is ugly at all.  It’s a dangerous place, full of knives and cold water, but it’s not bad.  Tony’s good, all through.

“It’s okay,” Steve adds, when the silence grows too wide.  “I can go.  Give you space.  I should talk to Thor anyway, see what he did to get Amora to leave us alone, in case she’s coming back.”

“Don’t you dare,” Tony whispers, low and urgent.

Steve plants his ass back in his chair so fast he thinks he might’ve given himself bruises on the backs of his thighs.  Tony rubs his palms on his jeans, then wanders, faux-casual, across the kitchen to where Steve is sitting.  Steve spends the whole time looking at Tony’s mouth.

When Tony reaches Steve, he throws one arm over the back of Steve’s chair, leaning the other on the table so he can peer at Steve’s puzzle.

“There’s an online app for all the NYT word puzzles, you know,” Tony says, running a finger over Steve’s answers.  “It’s neater.”

“I’m better at it on paper.”

“I just watched you almost eat your pen trying to come up with _Goodyear_ , Stars’n’Stripes -- I don’t know if that’s a credible claim.”

The knowledge that Tony was watching him makes a flush crawl up the back of Steve’s neck.  Tony’s close enough that Steve can smell the cologne on him and can see the tiny white scars on his forearms where he’s been hit with sparks from welding without proper protective equipment.

Steve takes a deep breath and twists sideways in his chair until he’s facing Tony.  “Can I?” he asks, tipping his head back so he can see Tony’s face.  Tony smiles, in a way he doesn’t usually, no brilliant flash of white teeth, just a small thing that pulls dimples into his cheeks.

That’s as good as a yes.  Steve skates one hand around Tony’s hip, sneaking his thumb under the edge of Tony’s shirt to touch soft, warm skin.  Tony pushes into the touch until Steve’s palm is pressed flat against his side.  Steve leans his forehead on Tony’s chest; Tony waits a moment, then carefully puts his hands in Steve’s hair.  His fingers move restlessly, smoothing the part in the wrong direction, rubbing back and forth behind Steve’s ears, never still.

“Are _you_ okay?” Tony asks, more gently than Steve would have expected of him a week ago.  Now he knows better.

“The drowning dreams were pretty familiar,” Steve says, voice muffled by Tony’s shirt.  “I wish we’d been able to talk about it earlier.”

Tony laughs, but his hands don’t fall away.  “What, and compare notes on our respective water-based traumas?”

“I guess.”  Maybe they could have held each other sooner.  Steve can’t say that out loud, quite.  He grips both of Tony’s hips instead.  He doesn’t know if he’s anchoring himself or anchoring Tony.

Tony’s hands slide down to Steve’s jaw, drawing him back up to look at him.  He searches Steve’s face, and seems to find whatever he’s hunting for.  “You know, maybe we could have.  Would have been a long shot.  I’m rotten at emotional openness.  Better at this part,” he says, and bends down close.

Steve forgets to close his eyes.  Tony’s kiss is gentle -- a maddening chaste press parted lips, slow and dry.  Steve huffs in frustration and stands up, lifting Tony along with him and backing him toward the kitchen counter.  Steve pins him there with one knee between Tony’s thighs and waits for a reaction.

“Alright then,” Tony says, licking his lips.  “It’s like that.”

“Yeah, it’s like that.”

The next kiss is deeper, slick and _satisfying_.  Tony’s a heavy, warm weight against him.  Steve likes all of it: the way Tony’s hands dance from place to place like they’re taking his measurements, the small pleased breaths he takes, the way his skin shivers when Steve rucks up his shirt and runs both hands up his rib cage.  Tony doesn’t stop and Steve doesn’t want him to, right up until a camera phone clicks behind them.  Steve jerks away, surprised.

“Oh, this one’s going on the fridge,” Natasha says.  Then she flips the phone around and leans into the frame to get a selfie with both of them.  Steve touches his lips and frowns, unhappily certain that they’re kissed pink.  Tony just flashes a shit-eating grin and a peace sign.

“You get used to the paparazzi,” Tony says, and pats Steve on the shoulder.  “Nat, scram, I’m despoiling here.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Natasha says, tapping something into her phone.  “Don’t mind me.  Be gentle with him, Stevie.”

“I resent that!”

“I’ll take it under consideration,” Steve says, and drags Tony in to kiss him again.

  
  


 


End file.
